Your self-worth will become based on rank.
When you go through basic training you will be told that upon graduation you will become an adult. In fact, you will become more than an adult. You will become a member of the elite echelon of society. Your maturity and responsibility will make you superior to the petty, selfish, undisciplined civilian herd.
However, the reality of life in the military does not reflect the propaganda you will be fed in basic training. The reality of your day to day life is comparable to what you experienced in high school. Everyone in the ranks between E-1 to E-4 are treated like high school students. The ranks of E-5 and E-6 are treated like teachers, and E-7 to E-9 are treated like school administrators.
When you wear the bottom four ranks you will be treated like children. Your superiors will look down on you, talk down to you, bully you and rub their rank in your face. You will be made to do menial chores and do the bulk of the work. You will be punished severely for any and every infraction possible. You will even be punished for things you didn’t do wrong, and you will have very little recourse to fight this, because your worth is based on your rank, and your rank is that of a peon. When you reach the middle tier ranks you will finally be treated like a human being. Your job will mainly involve training the lower ranks and managing paperwork. You will be less accountable for your actions and will have comfortable leeway to bend the rules. When you reach the top tiers of the enlisted pyramid you will become a figure head. You will spend most of your days doing paperwork and giving speeches. Since there are very few people above you to hold you accountable, and all of those people are in your club, you will be almost unaccountable for your actions. You will have to seriously screw up to get in trouble.
The power dynamic between the officer corps and the enlisted corps is comparable to slave owners and slaves. The slave owners are treated like gods and literally dine on golden plates under golden chandeliers. They have total power over the lower class and destroy their underlings lives with the snap of a finger. They are trained to believe in their superiority and wear their arrogance on their sleeves. They are less accountable for their actions. They will get in far less trouble for committing the same crimes as enlisted troops if they get in trouble at all. Being an officer is a very good life to have… and a very immoral one. It is an obsolete class structure that degrades the value of the lives of the human beings who wear enlisted ranks and directly contradicts the ideal of human equality.